Tools for Entrepreneurs that are Essential and Free

“Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation.”

Ah! Innovation! Innovation is to Technology like Mind Stone is to Vision. Innovation in the modern era, on a grand scale, is channeled to the markets through entrepreneurs and visionaries. They help build an eco-system where a huge chunk of the population gets access to new ideas and products, thus making lives better.

Every entrepreneur, small or big, needs a set of good and reliable tools to organize their business and to push for growth. From project management tools to product analysis platforms, here’s a list to help you pick the right ones.

Google Analytics

As an entrepreneur, insights on how my website is performing is very important. Google Analytics is a go-to solution for me as it is the best platform to gain data on how my website is performing and what kind of improvisations I need to make for my website to grow(organically). It gives a really comprehensive analysis for free, and this makes it the most popular analysis platform available on the internet. Learning how to use this tool can be a self-taught process. The keyword planner helps users gain organic traffic and make informed decisions based on the data provided by the tool. GA also provides plugins to major content management systems, and they are easily implementable.

TruePush

Not a day goes by without tech users coming across push notifications in their smartphones or browsers. Sounds like a simple statement, right? But the impact of push notifications is unparalleled. Gone are the days when email used to be the only medium of reaching out through the internet. With the advent of push notifications, especially products like TruePush, the game has evened out between big and small businesses/platforms. Although there are many service providers for push notifications, TruePush truly stands out by offering many premium features for free, which would otherwise cost hundreds of dollars usually. Some of the features that are provided by TruePush are RSS-to-feed, pre-defined and custom segmentation, pre-defined and custom triggers, hassle-free integration, real-time metrics, scheduling, et cetera. Apart from web push notifications, it’s service extends to both Android and iOS platforms.

Grammarly

From emails to blog posts and catalogs to books, Grammarly is your one-stop aid for all the writing you’ll ever do. There is no need to stress the importance of grammar, punctuation, and spelling when you write something related to your business. With the free version of Grammarly, these basic mistakes stand corrected. Not only that, Grammarly boasts of best-in-class AI system that corrects and improvises your writing. Detecting overused words, plagiarism checker, pointing out inconsistent writing styles and unclear sentence formation, hedging language(like seriously? This really is advanced stuff), are just some of the features that come with the premium version of Grammarly. The premium account starts at 11.66$/month if you checkout with an annual package. It surely is a value for money prospect! If you want your whole team to use Grammarly, then the business package which supports a team of 3-100(starts at 15$/month) is for you.

Buffer:

Social Media is one of the largest battlegrounds for marketing campaigns in the digital era. For any business/product, managing and optimizing different social media channels are pretty much like cooking a buffet for an Indian wedding. Well, to put it in simple words, Buffer makes the buffet a tasty affair. Schedule unlimited posts, handle multiple accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, and collaborate with your team to bring out the best of ideas. The pricing starts from 15$/mo and goes up to 199$/mo. The annual pricing comes with a discount tag of 20%.

Typeform

Taking forms to a whole new dimension is Typeform, a Barcelona based SaaS company. Typeform allows us to create dynamic yet elegant forms for all kinds of purposes. Surveys or Feedbacks play a highly important role in the growth of a business and doing it in style is made possible with this platform. One can easily integrate their Typeform account with Google Sheets, HubSpot, and MailChimp. The free plan allows 100responses/mo and 10questions per each form. The PRO and PRO+ plans, which are priced at 30USD/mo(350USD/yr) and 59USD/mo(700USD/yr), hold no restrictions over the number of responses or questions and include a few other premium features like logic jump and custom thank you screen.

Evernote

“It took Evernote 446 days to gain their first million users, but the next million took around half that time – 222 days to be exact. That number was almost halved again with their next million, which took 133 days, then 108, then 83, and then just 52 days to go from 5 to 6 million users. Over 19,000 new people sign up for Evernote every day.”* Just look at those numbers. I mean, if this isn’t a wow factor I don’t know what is. These numbers speak volumes about the productivity Evernote offers. Taking notes, organizing your schedule, listing tasks, and sharing your work, many things are possible through Evernote, and the list doesn’t end there. This makes Evernote a simple yet productive app that needs to be on your smart devices. The premium and business plans give access to features like AI-content suggestion and team collaboration for a price of 2.73USD/mo and 14.99/user/month, respectively.

Trello

Trello ain’t yellow, but for sure it makes things mellow, thanks to the amazing features it offers for productivity and management. You can create cards, add checklists, assign tasks, upload important files, update through comments and in short, plan and organize your projects/tasks efficiently and transparently within your team. The search feature is lightning fast and helps you look at exactly what you’re looking for even if you have loads of cards. The power-ups have many tools that can be chosen to fit your requirements. For example, the BlueJeans Meetings power-up lets you start video meetings with your Trello board for instant collaborations. The in-house Butler power-up lets you automate your day-to-day tasks but to unleash its full potential you might want to upgrade your free plan to Business class or Enterprise. With the features that come Business class(9.99USD/month), and Enterprise plans(custom pricing), organizing and managing projects becomes a breeze.

Canva

Multimedia is the way forward to reach out to the masses. You might be using tools like Buffer for social media engagement, but what about the content? Canva is you go to platform to create attractive images or posters for all your social media platforms and marketing campaigns. Thousands(maybe lakhs?) of templates are available for free and what’s really useful is the categorized templates that carter for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and such. The easy drag and drop sections, and highly customizable editing interface lets you come out with mind blowing and effective media. It’s hard to explain all that can be done with Canva as the possibilities are plenty, so head out to their website and look for yourself – you’ll be amazed. Coming to the pricing, although the free version of Canva is sufficient to create some beautiful media, the upgraded version which costs 12.95 USD/mo lets you do much more like having a transparent background and creating stunning graphic visuals. You can try the upgraded version for free for 30 days and cancel anytime you want.